News

Available Funding for Researchers

UW-Funded Pilot Awards (RIFP)

These 1-year grants of up to $20,000 are internally funded and are available to individuals with a UW faculty appointment. One member of the research team is required to be a Registered Nurse. Projects that are responsive to this call will: 1) engage population(s) with chronic illness; 2) have a research focus on sleep deficiency defined as poor sleep quality, disrupted or fragmented sleep or inadequate sleep duration; 3) use CISSM common data elements (CDEs) as appropriate if measuring that construct in study (ex. pain); 4) provide data that will be used for a larger extramural study.

Use of technology highly encouraged, but not required. Intervention study highly encouraged, not required. If the proposal does not focus on an intervention, the researcher will need to provide preliminary data to support the development of an intervention study. The application deadline is February 5th, 2018 no later than 5 pm.

The American Academy of Nursing today released its position statement recommending policies and practices that promote adequate, high quality sleep for nurses to contribute to safe nursing practice and patient care. Click on the link above to read the full position statement.

Improved implementation of the safe sleep practices recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics could help reduce sleep-related infant mortality. CDC analyzed 2009–2015 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data to describe infant sleep practices. Among all mothers responding, 21.6% reported placing their infant to sleep in a nonsupine position, 61.4% shared their bed with their infant, and 38.5% reported using soft bedding.

Click on link above to see the report.

Night Shifts May Be Linked To Increased Cancer Risk In Women, Study Suggests.

TIME (1/8, Park) reports that research suggests “women who work the night shift have a 19% increased risk of developing cancer compared to women do not work at night.” The findings were published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. After analyzing data from 61 studies, researchers “found that women who worked night shifts for longer periods of time had a 41% higher risk of skin cancer, 32% higher risk of breast cancer and an 18% greater risk of digestive system cancers compared to women who did not work night shifts.” The data indicated that “the risk was highest among nurses who worked at night; their risk of developing breast cancer if they worked night shifts long term was 58% higher than nurses who didn’t have night shifts.”

HealthDay (1/8, Dallas) reports that the studies analyzed included “people from North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.” When the investigators “took into account for location, they found that only the night-shift workers from North America and Europe had a greater risk for breast cancer.” Medscape (1/8, Jenkins) also covers the story.

In “To Your Health,” the Washington Post (7/31, Cha, 12.92M) reports that researchers studying “the connection between sleep and weight gain” found that study participants “who were sleeping an average of six hours each night had waist measurements about 1.2 inches…more than those getting nine hours of sleep a night.” Participants “with less sleep also weighed more.” The findings were published in PLOS One. Forbes (7/31, 14.59M) contributor David DiSalvo also discusses the findings.

Sleep Behavior Change: Using Social Cognitive Theory for a Realistic and Family-Centered Intervention
Michelle Garrison, PhD

Hilaire Thompson gave a presentation entitled “Common Data Elements: On the Road to Big Data?” The talk was sponsored by the Office for Nursing Research and the Center for Innovation in Sleep Self-Management.